|
This site is for sale,
Learn More
Referer
Referer
is a common misspelling of the word "referrer"; so common, in fact, that it made it into the official specification of
HTTP
- the communication
protocol
of the
world wide web
. When visiting a
webpage
, the
referer
(sic) or
referring page
is the
URL
of the previous webpage from which a
link
was followed. More generally, it is the URL of a previous item which led to this request - the referer for an image, for example, is generally the
HTML
page on which it is to be displayed. The referer is part of the HTTP request sent by the
browser program
to the
web server
.
Many web sites log referers as part of their attempt to track their users. Most
web log analysis software
can process this information. As referer information can violate
privacy
, some browsers have the option of disabling this functionality. Some
proxy
and
firewall
software will also block referers, to avoid leaking the location of non-public websites. This can in turn cause problems: some servers block parts of their site to browsers that don't send the right referer information, in an attempt to prevent
deep linking
or unauthorised use of images (
bandwidth theft
).
Recently many blogs have started publishing referer information in order to link back to people who are linking to them, and hence broaden the conversation. This has led, in turn, to the rise of
referer spam
.
Reference
-
RFC 2616: Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referer
Reprinted from Wikipedia, The Free-Content Encyclopedia under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Site Promotion Articles Indexes:
|
|